My new book Is the Pope Catholic? Variations on a Traditionalist Theme is a translation of a book I wrote in Swedish in 2024. It is part of the ebook series Uppsala Studies in Church History, available open-access (see link below).
‘Traditionalist Catholics’ rarely call themselves traditionalists. In this study, I still use the concept to refer to individuals and groups who, to varying degrees, oppose the decisions of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the post-conciliar developments in the Catholic Church. The term is thus analytical and almost universally accepted by scholars.
The ‘traditionalists’ see themselves as Catholics, or traditional Catholics, and emphatically claim that it is the church leadership, or at least its majority, that has departed from traditional Catholic doctrine, not them. They adhere to the so-called Tridentine Mass, the Roman Rite of 1570 (albeit in revised versions), and oppose the new Order of Mass, promulgated in 1969 and commonly called the Novus Ordo, which they consider to include substantial changes and therefore unacceptable. For them, Traditionalist Catholicism is just true Catholicism.
Although opposition to the reformed liturgy is central, traditionalists also distance themselves from the post-conciliar Church’s teachings more generally, e.g., on ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, religious freedom (for non-Catholics), and the changed conceptions of the Church’s role in society. Doctrine and liturgy are seen as integral parts of Tradition. Since they believe that both the conciliar documents and the post-conciliar popes have departed from what they regard as traditional Catholic teaching, they might ask: How could the popes have agreed to this?
This study centers on discussions from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s about whether John XXIII and Paul VI were antipopes. For those who hold that this was the case, it is obvious that their successors were, too, antipopes. However, some people believe that the real break from traditional Catholic doctrine only came with Francis’s pontificate. These recent discussions offer arguments similar to those presented earlier, and I do not specifically address the questions about Francis’s position.
Though there is abundant literature on the status of the conciliar and post-conciliar popes, almost all of it is written by adherents of different traditionalist positions, presenting arguments for their positions and countering others. More independent research on several of the more radical traditionalist views and groups is limited, and, to my knowledge, there is no broad, detailed scholarly overview focusing on the papal issue, at least not in English.
Magnus Lundberg 